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Going to a Kinetic Sculpture Race? Great! Will you be wearing silly clothes? Fabulous! If you’re lacking inspiration, this guide will help you plan your outfit.

If you’re not familiar with kinetic sculpture racing, you’re missing out! Giant human-powered sculptures lurch across land, sea, mud, sand and the occassional ice rink! Some races are really races, some are more like parades, but all are great fun and you should go at least once! Don’t forget your camera.

How to Dress

Wear something absurd! Onlookers wear all sorts of goofy outfits, and you should too!

This is a good time to rummage through the boxes in your attic or a thrift store to find the perfect KSR outfit. Remember, though, that you need to be able to keep up with the sculptures in the race, at least for short distances. Good ideas:

Wings! Some purveyors of fairy and pixie wings are How Cool, The Butterfly Source, and Fairy Love. You can also make your own! I made the pair I’m wearing in the photo on this page using coat hangers, white tights, acrylic paint, and feather boas.

Target has silly things in their hair ornament selection. Look for The Great Pretend-Ear headbands with wings and ears. Look for pony tail holders with big flowers and other festivity on them. Some are stretchy enough to be used as bracelets.

Thift stores have a great selection of silk and satiny handkerchiefs in an astounding array of colors and patterns. These can be tied to you, peek out of pockets and be sewn to clothes. They also have a selection of bright-colored swimming trunks which can be worn over bike shorts or running tights to make them more interesting.

Silly clothes you might wear again

We Love Colors has tights, socks, ties, tshirts and mini dresses in 40 really exciting colors and several even more exciting tie-dyes.

Straw Hats

Straw hats are easy to find and easy to make silly! Get a can of bright colored spray paint and one of clear from Home Depot or a craft store, apply a few coats of color and a few coats of clear paint, then hang small somethings from the brim all the way around. Candidates include pom poms, small toys, bright buttons, rubber chickens or even scrunched-up balls of bright colored paper. Visit Target or a dollar store to find great stuff to hang from your hat.

For more festivity, wrap tinsel around the top or attach a conical party hat or other ornament!

Examples

A vast improvement over last year’s drenching! See KineticBaltimore.com for photos, write-ups, commentary and awards. The 2005 movies illustrate precisely the sort of doom and damp which we do not endorse.

My very favorite sculpture, the Platypus powerhouse shifts into four-wheel drive to chug steadily out of the water. Not content merely to have a wicked cool sculpture whose engineering is art in itself, the Platypus returned this year sporting a platypus so impressive that it could have been its own sculpture. Quicktime movie, 18MB, 30 seconds

The Platypus churns up Key Highway, pausing to shift the gears of their Suzuki Samari transmission, and daintily topples a cone when their lane becomes insufficiently wide. The lighter two-headed dragon flies up behind. Quicktime movie, 18MB, 29 seconds

A dapper pilot pops out of the squid-covered KinetiNautilus as it zips up Key Highway, passing the Frog. The Rat is next in line to leap past the leisurely amphibian. Quicktime movie, 16MB, 25 seconds

The Hillbilly House spins by and we play tag with the Seussmobile, pipes and bouncing limbs a go-go. Thing 1 graces us with a furry salute as we jet off toward the water entry. Quicktime movie, 19MB, 30 seconds

The overly-complacent crowd breaks and runs as Bumpo the elephant careens out of the mud with unexpected speed. Quicktime movie, 9MB, 14 seconds

The cold rain that pervaded this year’s race caused the mud, which is usually the consistency of warm fudge, to be a brown puddle. Sculptures flew through with speed that probably surprised veteran racers.

Miso the segmented dragon bobs and sticks its tongue out as it rollsQuicktime movie, 1.4MB, 14 seconds

I was disinclined to take many photos this year because of the miserable weather. My camera got so wet that the LCD screen no longer works. Tom was not daunted though, and KineticBaltimore.com has a full selection.